Ndukwe Abandons Ghost Workers Enquiry

The Executive chairman of Oshimili North Local Government, Hon Louis Ndukwe has abandoned the staff verification exercise that he instituted on Sunday, 20 September 2015 to investigate the issue of 300 Ghost workers in Oshimili North Local Government.

XCLUSIVE MAGAZINE gathered on good and credible authority that Ndukwe has scrapped the investigative panel because he discovered that the accusing fingers being pointed at Hon Innocent Esewezie’s government as the originator of the purported 300 Ghost Workers was a malacious alarm raised by an aggrieved politician.

“The 300 Ghost Workers alarm was raised by Mrs Anthonia Adiefe Nwaoboshi, who wasn’t happy because she didn’t get key position in the government of Louis and Louis, who loves gossips, bought the idea,” explains our reliable insider source.

The reliable insider also told XCLUSIVE MAGAZINE that Ndukwe has now delayed payment of salaries by suspending the electronic system of payment. We understand that his alternative plan, which is currently being fine-tuned, is to pay workers’ salaries by hand, a kind of face-to-face direct payment.

“Even though this system of payment by hand will appear crude and rigorous, it is the only viable option to identifying and eliminating non-existent workers and blocking all the financial linkages in the system,” our insider source explained.

Ndukwe is desperate to shore-up the internally generated revenue of the council so as to be able to fund a chairman residential area in the Oshimili North LG Akwukwu Igbo, a massive housing project which he is eager to start and complete in his first term in office.

On 29 September 2015, XCLUSIVE MAGAZINE exclusively reported that the Ukala-Ukpuno born number one citizen of the LG had secretly constituted an investigative committee that includes his Head of Public Management (HPM) and Treasurer to the Local Government (TLG) to probe Esewezie’s Transition Committee Government for cooking up the books and paying salaries to 300 ghost workers during his tenure as Chairman of Oshimili North.

We further reported that Ndukwe’s claim that alleged 300 ghost workers in the LG financial books was the creation of Esewezie’s government and the staff verification exercise he had embarked upon as a result was a witch hunt against his predecessor.

Our report had incensed Chairman Ndukwe, who hurriedly put out a rebuttal on social media. In his Press Release, posted on Social Media by his media aide Emeka Ogbangwo, Ndukwe did confirm our report that there was indeed an ongoing staff verification exercise in Oshimili North Local Government necessitated by the “over-loading of the council payroll with ghost workers,” but insisted that the exercise “has no political undertone as reported in some quarters of the media” to save face.